Lost on Planet Earth

Some days I can lay in my bed all day and have little recollection as to what I did while in bed that day. I don't usually sleep. Sometimes I write on this blog or somewhere else. Other times I stare into a wall or window without really seeing anything for many hours at a time.

Time is a mystery to me. Has been my entire life. A sign of someone who has a Dissociative disorder is that they have a very distorted sense of time. For me, most of the time speeds up, and I don't know what happened to it. I might feel as though ten minutes have gone by, and really 4 hours have passed. This can frustrate those around me, and it often makes me late to my appointments.

I have learned recently in my haze of being disconnected from reality on this planet that although my body may be floating around on it, and even showing up to events in my life, I am often not really present. I am really somewhere else, which has always been a mystery to me.

The therapist-types always ask me where I go when I go away, but I never have any answer other than I have no idea. I suppose they think I have some elaborate fantasy place I go to, but I don't. Just more nothingness.

I have realized as of late that I am more absent than present. This is disturbing to me, especially because I realized I prefer to be absent from life. Life has been cruel to me, so can you blame me from trying to skip out on it?

Yet, if I don't change my mind and decide that I want to exist in this world, I won't get better. It is so hard when a fantasy of nothingness is better than a potentially rich life of reality.

Oh reality. For the past 3 years real life has beat the shit out of me. Betrayal and deep wounds have been delivered to my soul time after time so much that I have lost faith in the loving God that I once knew.

It is impossible to make sense of what I have experienced other than to believe that God has wanted to punish me.

So, I drag my body through life so as to not hurt the ones I love by leaving this planet, but my compromise has been to not really be present. People don't really notice because they tend to be so focused on themselves.

I don't really hear the words spoken to me, or notice the beauty or ugliness around me. It is kind of like the walking dead. But sometimes I decide to connect, usually with my kids, and it feels good, but not good enough to give up my addiction to merely floating on planet earth.

My escape to nothingness beats the suffering I endure when I show up for life.

My heart goes out to you. Betrayal, as you say, can leave deep wounds. We may well decide staying here and staying connected is not worth the pain. But God is not the one who caused your pain. He sees your tears, and grieves with you.

Free will allows human beings either to love or hate, to speak the truth or lies, to care or turn their backs on the suffering of others and walk away. It’s our choice. For unfathomable reasons, some people choose evil. But many do not. Those are the people you want in your life. People who can see how precious you are, even with your scars. People who will love and support you.

You know, they’ve been reporting on Hurricane Harvey in Texas. The devastation there is horrific. The emergency phone lines have been overwhelmed. But on their own, ordinary people having been rescuing others. In rafts and row boats, kayaks and inflatable dinghies, with no expectation of fame or reward, these people have been responding to calls for help on Facebook and Twitter.